I've been covering the video game space for 20 years for outlets like The Washington Post, Reuters, CNET, AOL, Wired Magazine, Yahoo!, Entertainment Weekly, NBC, Variety, Maxim, EGM, and ESPN. I serve as EIC of GamerHub.tv and co-founder of GamerHub Content Network, a video game and technology video syndication network that works with Tribune and DBG to syndicate game videos and editorial around the world. I also cover games for outlets like The Hollywood Reporter, IGN, Geek Monthly, CNN, DigitalTrends and PrimaGames.

MLG Founder Sundance DiGiovanni Believes ESports Will Be Mainstream Within 10 Years

With the world of pro gaming focused on Texas this weekend for the MLG Dallas Winter Championship, eSports continues to grow. There are new games added to the mix with Activision and Treyarch’s Call of Duty: Black Ops II and Blizzard Entertainment’s StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm joining Riot Games’ League of Legends. And live streaming numbers continue to catapult worldwide.

Sundance DiGiovanni, CEO and co-founder of Major League Gaming, believes the future looks bright for pro gaming. In fact, within a decade, he believes eSports will be part of pop culture just like regular sports are today. He talks about what the future holds in this exclusive interview.

When it comes to Black Ops II, what impact do you feel the fact that they went to a former pro gamer, Mike “Hastr0” Rufail, to help design the eSports offerings?

It was probably really helpful. Hastr0 knows what he’s talking about. He’s a seasoned pro. The studio guys at Treyarch chose very wisely. They showed that there was a commitment there beyond just saying they were going to support competitive gaming. They really dove in. They lengthened the development time on the game in some ways, and added some layers of complexity that were around broadcasting and the creation of content that they didn’t need to add. In adding them, they offered a new toolbox essentially, both to broadcasters and players, which is incredibly helpful because it draws a line in the sand and shows other developers and publishers a way to move forward with a certain set of tools that supports the communities, supports the activity, and supports a league like us.

Live streaming has been a huge part of the success of eSports. Black Ops II allows people to very easily and seamlessly live stream their play sessions. How do you see that impacting not only that game, but how things move forward as we see live streaming built into Sony’s PlayStation 4?

Live streaming will become more and more important. With the PlayStation 4 announcement of Sony’s Ustream partnership, there’s no moving back. One publisher does it, one developer does it, one piece of hardware does it. It’s out there, and it’s going to become more and more persistent. I’m excited to see not just how streaming technology improves over time and the screen viewer technology improves over time, but how the broadcast tools, sharing tools, and social media tools layer in to give us even deeper experiences where the engagement goes up and we see improvement in the ability to create content because of these toolsets. All these things in the right hands are going to make for some really entertaining clips in the future.

It takes one brave publisher or developer to lead the charge. We’re starting to see more and more of that. With U4iA’s Offensive Combat, the tie-ins that we have from the game through GameBattles are significant. They’re deeper than any other game we’ve ever been tied in to, and I think they’ll lead the way for other games to tie into the platform. That’s a testament to U4ia’s belief in the competitive community, the ability to think on their feet, and react accordingly in providing them with the tools that are going to make for better competitive experiences.

The new head of CBS Interactive believes that in the future, broadcast does have a role with eSports. What do you feel needs to be done for eSports to appear on the more mainstream radar like real sports are?

The only thing that’s required is time. What you have is, essentially, the nine years old of today all know what this is. When they’re 19 years old and out there in the world, then when you walk out on the street and you mention the top StarCraft II player, or you mention being at a recent MLG event, people will know what you’re talking about.

It’s not very often that a new sport is built, so it takes time. You have to keep in mind that my goal is not to go out and get every 50-year-old man in the United States to turn the TV on to watch a competitive StarCraft match, or watch somebody play Call of Duty. My role is to build something that in 10 years…the guys who today are 28, when they’re 38, are still watching.

How have you seen things improve over the span of MLG?

The generational shift is happening both up and down. We see it in our numbers. We see it in our growth. We see in the fact that last year we had a 300 percent growth of audience. All we need to do is continue on our current course and speed, and that will take care of itself. With all of us who have been doing this for some time, we’d like to be little bit further along in that growth curve, but my estimation is that in the next 10 years you’ll see that what we’ve done in eSports will rival any traditional sport in terms of awareness.

When do you feel mainstream advertising executives will catch on to what’s going on in eSports?

There’s a 28-year-old junior ad executive out there right now who’s a huge StarCraft fan, who probably plays Offensive Combat every now and then. In 10 years, when he’s 38 and running a group division inside one of the majors, he’ll be in charge of that and aware of what eSports is.

Getting beyond the exploratory budget is what anything needs to do in order to become legitimized and become “real.” We’ve already seen it with our advertising partners, but the broader space isn’t at the point yet where part of their media budget every year goes towards eSports. That’s a shift that’s going to take time; it’s not a question of convincing a 55-year-old ad executive, or a 55-year-old manager of an advertising budget.

It’s being able to provide through statistics and data evidence of a return on investments around the activity that’s strong enough to warrant the spend. That comes with audience growth and engagement. What we already have already generates tens of millions of dollars worth of revenue just for us in this space. If we continue on our course of speed, I think you’ll see that happen within the next five years.

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